The meat-packing industry has been the scene of important advances in the area of automated loading and packaging of specially prepared meat items such as weiners, frankfurters, and so forth. These advances, however, have been limited to the area of cooked meat products, including cooked sausages, weiners and the like. No similar automation advances have been developed for the handling and packaging of uncooked sausages. As a result, it is the almost universal practice to hand-load the uncooked sausages into trays. The reason for this failure on the part of the industry to automate and thus render more efficient the handling and packaging of uncooked sausage items relates directly to the nature of the uncooked sausage, as compared to any similar but cooked item like a cooked sausage, cooked weiner, and so forth. Uncooked sausages are extremely flaccid, limp and "squishy", to such an extent that machine components like tongs or suction devices are not able to handle them consistently and with a failure rate near zero. It will be understood that it is quite essential for any automated machine to be capable of continuous operation with a virtually zero failure rate, since a single failure can cause the machine to be shut down, result in expensive "down time", and so forth.
To use a specific example, it takes five workers about one hour to load 1,000 lbs of uncooked sausage into trays ready for wrapping. This represents several thousand individual sausages. If an automated machine were to take the place of these five workers, and run continuously over an eight-hour shift without a single failure on a single sausage (i.e. without allowing a single sausage to become stuck in the machine, gum up the operation of the machine, and the like), the failure rate would have to be less than one sausage in better than ten thousand sausages, this being less than 1/100th of 1%. Until now, due to the flaccidity of uncooked sausages, this kind of performance simply has not been achievable.
Accordingly, it is a primary aspect of this invention to succeed, where prior attempts have failed, in providing an automated machine capable of packaging uncooked sausages into sausage trays, and also capable of rejecting any sausages having a length either greater or smaller than a specific range suitable for the particular tray size, thus effecting weight control in the packed trays.
This invention thus provides, in one aspect, a release mechanism for sequentially releasing tray-like items which have a rim extending outwardly, the mechanism comprising:
a mounting member adapted to be positioned adjacent a vertical stack of said tray-like items,
a lip member pivotally mounted to said mounting member on the side facing said vertical stack and defining a lip, the lip member being swingable between a first position in which the lip extends into a position of interference with the rims of the tray-like items, thereby supporting the same, and a second position in which the lip is withdrawn from interference and is non-supporting for the tray-like items,
resilient means biasing the lip member into its first position,
a displaceable member mounted to the mounting member and having finger means capable of moving between a first position in which it is withdrawn from contact or interference with the tray-like items, and a second position in which it is located above the lip member and projects under the rim of the tray-like item next above that resting on said lip,
and pusher means for simultaneously (a) pivoting the lip member to its second position and (b) urging the displaceable member into its second position, thereby to allow a tray-like member resting on said lip to drop while retaining the tray-like member next above.
According to another aspect, this invention provides a reciprocating mechanism for repeatedly pushing items stacked on a support surface, the mechanism comprising:
a pusher member,
reciprocating power means for urging the pusher member alternatingly in a forward direction across the support surface and then in a rearward direction,
means laterally of the pusher member defining at least one cam track having a lower leg substantially parallel with the support surface, an upward leg at the forward end of the lower leg, a return leg above said lower leg, and a downward leg joining the return and lower legs at the rear,
follower means on the pusher member for following said cam track,
and spring means for gradually increasing upward force on the pusher member as the latter moves forwardly, the upward force at the forward end being strong enough to raise the pusher member up to the return leg, but being weak enough at the rearward end to allow the pusher member to return by its own weight to the lower leg.
In yet another aspect, this invention provides an apparatus for loading sausage-like items into trays comprising:
a first endless conveyor for passing the items sequentially along a straight path in a forward direction,
a second endless conveyor laterally adjacent to the first endless conveyor, for carrying trays sequentially in said forward direction,
dispensing means for depositing sequential trays onto said second conveyor,
loader means adjacent the first conveyor on the other side from the second conveyor, the loader means being adapted to displace items laterally off said first conveyor toward the second conveyor,
a table surface suspended over said second conveyor forwardly of said dispensing means and adapted to receive said items displaced by the loader means, the table surface having a free forward edge above the second conveyor,
means for arresting a tray on said second conveyor such that at least part of the tray projects forwardly beneath said free forward edge,
and reciprocating pusher means above said table surface for pushing off said surface and into the tray items collected on said surface.